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Health & Fitness

No Woman Is an Island: The Power of Girls Sports

Girls sports can make the world a better place. I know competitive team sports totally changed my life. I only wish I didn't have to wait until I was in my 20s to become an athlete.

We all play sports in my house now: my husband and two daughters all play soccer, my husband and older daughter play softball, my older daughter also plays basketball, and I play ultimate Frisbee twice a week (at a fun pick-up game at Tillman park — come out and join us Wednesday and Friday mornings!)

But this wasn’t always the case. Growing up, no one in my family played sports. I think “sports” just wasn’t on my parents’ radar. My sister and I grew up in the 70s, before Title IX was really established, and none of my friends played a sport. Plus, we lived in Berkeley where there was a kind of hippie/feminist idea that competitive sports were capitalist and patriarchal. “Competition” was out; “Non-Zero Sumgames were in. And I believed, as many do, that athletic ability is something you are either born with or not. If you haven’t demonstrated exceptional talent at a young age then you are not destined to be an athlete. (And if you are not going to be exceptional, why do it at all?)

So imagine my surprise when I became a competitive athlete in my mid-20s. Not only that, I became a missionary for the religion of sports. Competitive team sports. For girls, especially. (The rabbi who married my husband and me even noted at our wedding, “It is always painful to see young Jews drawn to another religion. But in the case of Ultimate Frisbee…”)

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Yes, I am now a true believer. I believe that girls competitive sports can make the world a better place. Research has shown that in addition to health benefits (reduced risk of obesity, osteoporosis and even cancer), girls who play sports do better in school, are less likely to get pregnant as teens, and are less likely to be victims of abusive relationships and other violence.  

How do sports do that? By fundamentally changing a girl’s relationship with her own body. When I was growing up, I did not like my body. I didn’t hate it as much as some of my friends hated their bodies. I never suffered from a serious eating disorder, but I did feel that I was fat and started dieting in fifth grade. My body “developed” early and I started getting unwanted attention from men at about that time too. When I heard catcalls and whistles on the street, I never heard this as “You are attractive” but rather “You have big boobs,” which is information I could just get from the label on my bra.

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I thought of my body as something I needed to control, that the best I could do was diet and exercise so I wouldn’t be “fat” and therefore unattractive (although I recognized that men seemed paradoxically attracted to the curves that I hated). Aside from attracting male attention, the main purpose of a body was to carry one’s brain around. It never occurred to me that my body could be a source of pride and pleasure, that I could develop impressive physical skills and experience joy in athletic accomplishment.

When I was in graduate school, I started playing Ultimate Frisbee on UCSB’s Women’s team the Burning Skirts. In addition to developing my physical athletic ability, I experienced the joy of playing on a team, of being part of a group of women who all supported each other and were working for the same goal. I learned that competition was a great motivator, that competitors were not enemies.

Unlike the cliques and girls social groups I had previously experienced, the women’s team was a true meritocracy. The leaders and players who got the most playing time were the best players. Some had more natural talent than average, but in almost all cases the best players were the ones who worked the hardest, who were the most dedicated, who practiced the most intensely. And guess what? I could do that too! I could work hard, and be dedicated, and try my best, and I did! And I found that I also improved. I was never the best player on the team, but I went from being a totally unskilled player to actually being a leader and an asset to the team. And I earned my position of leadership not by “playing politics” or being nice or kissing up, but by hard work and the development of objective skills. What a revelation for a girl who spent elementary school and jr. high wondering how to become “popular!”

Through team sports, I came to see my body as something amazing, that I could trust to do what I had trained it to do, whose purpose was not just to be attractive but to be powerful and skilled. The rest of the culture gave the message that no matter what else I did or accomplished my attractiveness would be judged, that other girls were mainly competitors for male attention, that my body was weak and incompetent. Team sports convinced me that my physical skills are valuable regardless of my attractiveness, other girls can be allies, and my body is strong and skilled. Those messages can last a lifetime. Thirteen years after my last competitive tournament I still consider myself an athlete.

Next time I will write about being a parent of athletic girls, but in the meantime I recommend a Positive Coaching Alliance Class on Wednesday 10/19 at Earhart School to learn how to coach, motivate, and role model for our children. PCA is a non-profit set up out of
 Stanford University whose board members include Julie Foudy, Brandi Chastain, Ronnie Lott, Steve Young, Steve Mariucci and Summer Sanders.

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